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Where Writing Floats on a Sea of Conversation

Marah at the Bowery Electric: May 27, 2010

It would be hard for me to know less about the NYC music scene, but after two years of moving to the Northeast, I’m finally getting out of the house to see Marah at the Bowery Electric. Love to hear from people who could tell me about the band or the venue. A friend pointed me to this article by one of my favorite writers, Nick Hornby. Here’s what he had to say a couple years ago about the band:

But what I love about them is that I can hear everything I ever loved about rock music in their recordings and in their live shows. Indeed, in the shows you can often hear their love for the rock canon uninflected — they play covers of the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait,” or the Jam’s “In the City,” and they usually end with a riffed-up version of the O’Jays’ “Love Train.” They play an original called “The Catfisherman” with a great big Bo Diddley beat, and they quote the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” and the Who’s “Magic Bus.” And they do this not because they’re a bar band and people expect cover versions, but because they are unafraid of showing where their music comes from, and unafraid of the comparisons that will ensue — just as Bruce Springsteen (who really did play “Little Latin Lupe Lu” for an encore, sometimes) was unafraid.